How Can I Underline the Button Text of UIButton? - iphone

Question

The text is coming form a database. I would like to use it for a button and underline the text of the button. How can I do that?

Answer 1

In iOS 6, NSAttributedString is used modifying the text, you can use "NSMutableAttributedString" for multi color text, font, style, etc using single UIButton or UILabel.
NSMutableAttributedString *titleString = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:#"The Underlined text"];
// making text property to underline text-
[titleString addAttribute:NSUnderlineStyleAttributeName value:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:NSUnderlineStyleSingle] range:NSMakeRange(0, [titleString length])];
// using text on button
[button setAttributedTitle: titleString forState:UIControlStateNormal];

Answer 2

For this you can subclass UILabel and overwrite its -drawRect method and then use your own UILabel and add a UIButton over it of custom type.
Make your drawRect method in UILabel as
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor(context, 207.0f/255.0f, 91.0f/255.0f, 44.0f/255.0f, 1.0f);
CGContextSetLineWidth(context, 1.0f);
CGContextMoveToPoint(context, 0, self.bounds.size.height - 1);
CGContextAddLineToPoint(context, self.bounds.size.width, self.bounds.size.height - 1);
CGContextStrokePath(context);
[super drawRect:rect];
}

Answer 3

In Swift 3 the following extension can be used for an underline:
extension UIButton {
func underlineButton(text: String) {
let titleString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)
titleString.addAttribute(NSUnderlineStyleAttributeName, value: NSUnderlineStyle.styleSingle.rawValue, range: NSMakeRange(0, text.characters.count))
self.setAttributedTitle(titleString, for: .normal)
}
}

Answer 4

To make this a bit simpler (it's a common requirement) I've built a simple UIButton subclass called BVUnderlineButton that you can drop straight into your projects.
It's on Github at https://github.com/benvium/BVUnderlineButton (MIT licence).
You can use it in a XIB / Storyboard or direct via code.